


This is the wrong night (tell me goodnight, and let it go)

by KayMoon24



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Annette puts up with so much shit, Biting, Complete, Drinking, Drunk Dimitri, Drunk Sex, Drunk Shenanigans, Drunken Confessions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Felix has a lot of repressed emotions and Annette is so, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Drinking, Hurt/Comfort, Male Friendship, Mentions of Glenn Fraldarius, Mentions of Rodrigue Fraldarius, Mildly Dubious Consent, Slow Burn, Spoilers for Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Sylvain just wanted his best buds to have a good time god damn it, The Tragedy of Duscur, Unstable Felix has feelings, drunk felix, drunk sylvain, fam this fic now has fanart, i have a lot of regrets in my life but this fic isn't one of them, missing support chains between the emotionally-damaged boy squad, platonic male friendships deserve love and time too, so good for letting him get those out tho, soft, soft felix, thegoodporn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 14:08:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20490137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayMoon24/pseuds/KayMoon24
Summary: Annette, in her too-loose nightgown, looked as if she would have rather been told that the monastery was on fire than see Sylvain, as well as His Highness, outside of her bedroom door, holding up a drunk Felix between them.Alternate summary: Sylvain had a plan to survive the anniversary that ruined all of their lives: he’d get his two best friends to go out for a night of drinking! They’d have a few laughs, no one would punch anyone, and then Sylvain would drop them off and go have super hot sex with Dorothea. Except that isn’t what happens. Not by a long shot.





	This is the wrong night (tell me goodnight, and let it go)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kroissant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kroissant/gifts).

> AN: Hi FE3H fandom, welcome back to my trashpile for a very specific FE3H pairing; this was supposed to be an exercise in wild untamed sex but then it just got really sad, which is the MO for all of my work, more or less, also you’re welcome??
> 
> SIDE NOTE: you don’t necessarily need my first fic "Baby, Hold Me (Closer)" for the Felix/Annette goodness (which also features dark plot and thegoodporn), but I would argue that it might help give their relationship a bit more context, as this one-shot treats them more as a more pre-established couple. Shameless plug over!
> 
> maybe one day my work will just have a normal plot and not end in the devil's tango.
> 
> Fic dedicated to: Kroissant! Kroissant's sweet, sweet Feliannie work is pretty much everything. Please go and check out her adorable pieces of Felix/Annette work when you feel your soul need be cleansed from, you know, enjoying this thing. 
> 
> WARNING: THIS FIC IS PRETTY SAD AND ANNETTE SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF HER PARTNER, PRACTICE SAFE SEX, KIDS, ALWAYS NOT SEX UP YOUR CUTE DRUNK S.O. AND TRY NOT TO COMMIT CARDINAL SIN, ya feel me?

* * *

“—And I’m pretty sure that’s when Glenn said—Oh man, what _ was _ it that he said again?—It was so perfect, Dimitri, I swear, it was pure untapped gold. Rodrigue’s face, I didn’t think the Fraldarius family line could _ feel _ embarrassment, but there the Shield of Faerghus stood, _ annihilated _ by his son’s come back, pink to the points of his ears.“  
  
Dimitri let out a loud laugh. “Sylvain, that’s simply incredible. I can’t imagine Rodrigue’s face, suddenly eating the sour grapes that his own son grew for him.”  
  
“Sour?” Sylvain made a face. “Try poisoned. That kind of a comeback kills you, Dimitri.”  
  
Again, Sylvain watched Dimitri laugh.  
  
The sound carried loud into the night, uncaring and genuine. It had become a game Sylvain had taken to playing silently with himself. Here it was, the dreaded night of all nights to drag by, the anniversary of The Tragedy of Duscur and Sylvain was getting the guarded prince to laugh. Sylvain wasn’t just proud of himself; _ he was a complete evil genius. _ Not to discount the team effort that was the four and a half bottles of wine, nor the causal company of just sitting around, talking away the looming dark hours of the night as if today wasn’t what it was. As if they hadn’t changed. As if Dimitri hadn't only just recently seemed to find himself again, shaken and wide eyed, after a rainy night of talking to the Professor.  
  
Then again, Sylvain wouldn’t dare to question the whys and the hows. They never mattered to him. The Professor just had that effect on people. Sylvain felt that even he was included in those compassionate, intimate talks. The Professor had this whole power over her team, something to with her beauty and her...everything...He never thought that even Dimitri, half-mad, half-alive, half-still-Sylvain’s-best-friend, would be immune to it forever.  
  
“Well, I’d—I’d never, not once, ever, have asked Glenn about his own ability to—” Dimitri’s dry chuckle slipped through his words. A hand covered the bottom half of his mouth self-consciously, just like when they were kids, and he had made the prince laugh so hard that he’d spat milk out of his nose—one for the books, that joke. ”—taking Ingrid to bed _ before _ their wedding night?” Dimitri continued with a snicker. “Did Rodrigue know his son at all?”  
  
_ “I know!” _ Sylvain knew his voice was loud, like way too loud, particularly given how late it had gotten during their drinking but he couldn’t help it. The memory was too funny, too _ alive _ inside of him to not be celebrated. “I mean, I’m willing to say just about anything to anyone, but I don’t think even I would want to question Glenn’s integrity about his love life!”  
  
Sylvain glowed at how amused Dimitri looked before him. His hair, for once, was secured behind his head in a tight pony’s tail, and Sylvain was relieved that his plan seemed to be working. There wasn’t the usual aggression in the air, no hapless, toothless insults or mindless threats between Felix and Dimitri. But, of course, it had been mainly just Dimitri and himself chatting for the better half of the hour, and, well, Sylvain felt a bit bad for not paying nearly as much attention towards Felix, either. But Felix was more a prop than anything. If his usual cold-faced stare added much of anything to Sylvain’s plan but Sylvain could make nearly anyone work in his favour given enough time. And when it came to Felix? Not talking worked just fine.  
  
“Have you ever told Ingrid this story?” Dimitri continued as he took another slip from his goblet.  
  
Another smirk answered Dimitri, wide and playful, over Sylvain’s face. “Actually, she’s the one that asks to hear it the most. She thinks it’s Glenn’s finest movement of cutting teeth with his old man.”  
  
Dimitri laughed and Sylvain watched him happily. His hands weren’t balled into fists, his hair actually out of his face. Sylvain could see every held-back peel of laughter, every time Dimitri allowed a witty, crass joke to escape from his locked off mind. He seemed...happy. He’d be yelled at tomorrow, ironically by Ingrid, or maybe Professor Hanneman. He’d probably even have some horrible, dirty, punishing task to attend with, but this was worth every attempt. Because it was not easy to get Dimitri to agree, nor Felix, who said little to begin with and even less as the hours sailed by, but for every failure Sylvain was met with, there was a now. And this now? It was _ perfect. _ _  
_ _  
_ “Well, thank you for telling me, Sylvain. I’d never heard it before.” He scrubbed his face with his free hand, messing up his thick blond hair, pushing it back before he shook in laughter a final time. “Glenn was so damn funny. Even if I had a thimble of his wit, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”  
  
“It was a damned once in a lifetime take down that I shall forever recount into legend, my friends. Right, Felix?” Sylvain concluded, a tear in his eye.  
  
He wiped at his face but jumped when he had moved his other hand instead. He couldn’t help but giggle at the simplistic confusion of wanting to use his left hand and suddenly flailing his right. He hadn’t meant to get this drunk. He wondered for an anxious moment if perhaps his friends were even worse off than him. And Sylvain had to chide himself; he had honestly been trying to hold back. He had plans beyond these two fools tonight. Plans that required candles, the ability to undo his own pants, and the ability to dodge around the beautiful, hot-mouthed insults Dorothea would be lobbying at him like hunting arrows.  
  
Ah, Dorothea. Sylvain had stopped paying attention to Dimitri’s weak attempt to not spill himself a new cup of wine, nor that Felix...wait, hadn’t he asked Felix a question, like, a thousand years ago?  
  
“Eh, Felix?” Sylvain urged again. He had turned towards Felix in question. What was unquestioning was the usual uninterested position that Felix had slumped himself into. His elbow upon the table, his face crushed into his forearm to rest there. His free hand rested loosely around his goblet of wine, empty except for a few luke-warm swills. “‘Lix?”  
  
Felix wouldn’t look at him. Or respond. Or…wait, was Felix _ asleep? _  
  
“Hey.” Sylvain felt the smile loosening on his face. He pushed faintly at Felix’s shoulder. “So, Dimitri and I, we’re that boring, huh? Could you at least pretend you want to be here right now?”  
  
Much like a startled cat, Felix’s spine snapped straight. His hand took down his wine in the process of his panic, and Sylvain’s cup too, for that matter. His black hair looked wild around the reddened veins within the whites of his eyes. Almost as if he had been...crying...  
  
Oh. No.  
  
Sylvain’s heart gave a little jump. He brought a hand to rest easy over the middle of Felix’s back. “Hey. You okay?”  
  
From beneath his fingers, Sylvain felt Felix’s entire body tighten as if the last thing he possibly wanted was to be touched.  
  
His eyes still didn’t lift from his cup. _ “What?” _ _  
_  
“Uh, ‘what’, yourself?” Sylvain furrowed his red brows at Felix. “Where are you at right now? I just finished telling His Royal-I-Don’t-Drink the best Glenn story, and somehow _ he’s _ kept up with my incredible story-telling, but you didn’t even grace me with a chuckle.”  
  
He watched Felix turn his head again, this time to look in the opposite direction of Sylvain’s large, overly worried face. His shoulders flexed again beath Sylvain’s hand. Air entered with a rough, dragging breath and then left shakily out of his mouth. His friend had gone completely pale. Sylvain leapt his eyes to Dimitri’s, unsure, and Dimitri merely stared back, his own pale eye now scrunching into concern.  
  
“Felix?” Dimitri’s turn to try. His Grace’s voice, the easy laughter that had been resting within it, went flat. “Have we done something wrong?”  
  
“No.” Felix replied quickly. Too quickly. His lips felt numb. So did his legs. His eyes tightly closed. He knew this feeling. He knew this feeling and he couldn't run away from it fast enough. “Just sh'd up. Talk, or whatever.”  
  
Dimitri blinked quickly at the illogical command.  
  
“Uh. Sure.” His Grace moved to pull back up the cups onto their stands, first Felix’s, then Sylvain’s, and he minded absently at how the wine had trailed back towards Felix, off the table, and probably onto his pants. He had wanted to say ‘Did the wine get on you’ but instead he said, “I was thinking. What I admired most about Glenn was…”  
  
Felix had stopped listening. It was getting easier to stop now. When his own fingertips had started to feel as if they were buzzing, when the tiny nerves twisting inside of his skin flashed in complicated waves of too hot, too cold, too hard to keep ahold of his cup, he knew he was getting closer to just falling asleep, and it would be over. This wretched day, his stupid agreement to even be out here, and the words. The words poured over him like water, unable to grasp or hold on to, rapidly churning into hard to comprehend noise. That, and he was rapidly beginning to lose track of time.  
  
The moon had once been white and glistening at his back. Then, it had stared owlishly wide just over the cut of Dimitri’s shoulder. Now the moon split into two complicated interlocked circles that he could no longer focus into a whole.  
  
He blinked. He didn’t remember closing his eyes to do so. But where there hadn’t been a cup of wine before, there was one again.  
  
He allowed his eyes to meet Dimitri's. He wanted to tell Dimitri that he had missed him. He wanted to tell Dimitri that he had been scared out of his mind that he’d just up and die. He wanted to lift his hand and punch “His Highness” in his face, straight under his jaw, appreciate the sound of pain that would leave his lips, just a good clean hit to tell Dimitri that he wasn’t allowed to sink so low into his own depression again, ever again. But Felix's arm wouldn't move.  
  
And the wine. He resisted twitching his nose up at the cup, already nauseated by the sight of it.  
  
To take another sip of wine, he knew he’d be sick.  
  
But Sylvain was there, yapping at him like some untrained mutt, and he just wanted the world to be quiet again. No more Glenn. No more memory.  
  
No more anything.  
  
If he couldn’t escape it, Felix wagered, thoughts low and drifting, he’d dive face first into it. The world had already faded at its edges a few times. It didn’t matter that his stomach hurt, too acidic and too full of wine, empty the entire day without an ounce of food. How did Sylvain talk so much? Felix's throat felt coated in a thick slime, yet coarse, as if swallowing was already too much of an effort to do.  
  
He finally touched the cup, fingers hardly curled around it. However, another hand blocked the view of it, large fingers tight over the open bowl of the goblet, and Felix felt his vision swirl like the rippling of a puddle, a few watery, lasped together images as he turned to take in Sylvain’s nervous face.  
  
Sylvain met his eyes. His dark eyes were glassy but he looked aware enough to mean it when he pulled the wine away from Felix’s grasp. “Look, I think that’s enough, okay?"  
  
Felix’s arms were suddenly at the air, missing Sylvain’s hand by a good margin, as he fought for the wine back.  
  
“Fuck off. I know when I’ve had enough, alright?” Felix shot back. Except that it was less of a ‘shot’ and more a weak, mumbled attempt to convey his hot, raw anger that had sputtered out a little too unfiltered. Then, Felix coiled back, a hand aimlessly shoving back to get Sylvain’s hand off of him. “Stop fuckin’ touching me.”   
  
However, once Sylvain’s hand had moved, Felix felt his entire center of gravity fall with it.  
  
The ground rushed up to meet his back, a loud ‘oof’ of air that slithered out between his clenched teeth. He waited for the pain to spike through him, the edge of his spine scabbed over the gravel, but he didn’t feel anything. His teeth hurt, though, and he had trouble unclenching his jaw, as if he couldn’t recall how.  
  
Sylvain’s face peered into view. “Ouch.” His nose wrinkled sympathetically. “Felix? You okay?”  
  
A curse was inside of his mouth but Felix couldn’t form it. He clenched his teeth to keep from yelling at Sylvain, but now he was staring straight up into the velvet dark above him, his teeth painfully smashed together inside of his jaw, staring into the blackness of the night. It was as if the sky had been sewed together like in one of his mother’s great tapestries, and, slowly, the stars had started turning around him, white dancing dots that made him feel as if he was being pulled around and around, a slow, uncomfortable circling with no end and no beginning. He blinked, forced his eyelids down, trying to stop the stars from getting under his lids, but even shutting his eyes wouldn’t make it stop, covering his face wouldn’t make it stop, _ nothing would make it stop, stop, please stop. _ _  
_ _  
_ Dimitri gave a loud laugh at Felix’s clumsy fall. He was also laughing at Felix’s endearing utter lack of tongue, rather unlike how he would have years ago, when they were just a pair of idiot students, but maybe change from the Professor had allowed a new life enter into Dimitri.  
  
Or, maybe it was the many, _ many _ cups of wine, but Sylvain wasn’t one for numbers. Still, this was...unaccounted for. Sylvain could feel the situation churning beneath the ease it had once been, and, before his eyes, he could see it: _ Felix, literally flipping the whole damn table on top of Dimitri, the broken jagged shards of bottle-glass and bent goblets, the sound of Dimitri’s body twisted into the dirt, crushed by the force and the weight of Felix, aiming for his throat between clumsy, shaking fingers. _ _  
_  
“Annnnnd I think we’re done here,” Sylvain stated bluntly.  
  
Felix felt the ground shift unnaturally backwards, like he was falling in reverse. It felt strangely familiar, like a magic spell gone all wrong, like some dumb mistake Annette would have made near him, some wayward panic, and that thought of Annette, how badly he wanted to see her, to smell her, how maybe she could make all of his terrible mistakes far away, make the world fade away, but Sylvain’s stupid hands were hauling him upright, onto his feet, and he struggled to not fall straight back onto his knees.  
  
“Whoah.” Sylvain muttered. He had to hold Felix almost completely upright. “Shit.”  
  
“Is he alright?” Dimitri’s voice, closer now. Felix felt himself want to cry again about as much as he wanted to beat Sylvain straight into the dirt, probably give him a few extra stomps with the heel of his boot. They were too close and too loud. He hated them for pretending tonight wasn’t completely fucked up. He hated Glenn for dying on him. He hated this.  
  
“Yeah,” Sylvain’s voice was a nightmare this close to Felix’s face. “He’s pretty messed up, though. He has absolutely no balance. I didn’t realize he’d, like, chugged his entire half of the wine.”  
  
A warm breath, something like a sigh, moved through Felix’s hair. It made Felix realize that his hair had come undone in his fall, and it was probably hanging at his shoulders, mixed in with grass and dirt and sweat. He felt himself begin to tremble, because he hated his hair in his face, and he hated himself, and he hated that Sylvain had talked him into trying to make Dimitri not think about what today was, because it had only made Felix think about what today was—  
  
He had thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and thought about it until he decided he didn’t want to have thoughts anymore.  
  
“I...I should’ve known better.” Sylvain continued, probably answering some unheard question Dimitri had asked of him. “I didn’t think to check on him, you know? I just...I thought.” Sylvain’s voice stopped. There were always so many words Sylvain seemed to use to find a way out. They failed him now. “Felix, why didn’t you say something?”  
  
A hand was at Felix’s back again, pressing lightly against the sway that kept stumbling his legs backwards; it was his lone defense against the world and its turning. But Felix felt the air paper-out, thin and tight and barely enough in his lungs. Why did Sylvain keep fucking touching him? He wanted him to disappear. He wanted everyone and everything in the entire sky to black out. He wanted to black out.  
  
“Like you couldn’t care,” Felix hissed. The words collapsed over the back of his teeth, mixed up, and they didn’t make sense to his own ears. The words shook, the words trembled.  
  
He couldn’t possibly be crying.  
  
Felix had thrown out a hand to hit Sylvain but it never connected with skin.  
  
However, shaking and desperate, Sylvain allowed Felix’s fingers to grab at his vest, the force knotted, knuckles white to the bone. There was two of Sylvain now, unsteady before his eyes. Then, after another blink, three. He felt the world sway beneath his feet and suddenly the idea of punching Sylvain square in the jaw disappeared, lost in the panic of feeling as if the ground was giving way beneath them both. Two hands were now in Sylvain’s vest, now holding onto him for dear life rather than a warning.  
  
“Whoa-whoah,” Sylvain easied. There was a warmth now, tight over Felix's wrists, holding him back. Felix searched the ground, unsure what had happened. He felt like he could throw up. He felt like crying. He felt like throwing Sylvain into the dirt, as hard as he possibly could, until his teeth rattled in his stupid idiot jaw. “Relax. You’re gonna take me down with you.”  
  
“Let go of me.” Felix growled.  
  
“Um, you grabbed onto me.” Sylvain pointed out.  
  
Felix wanted to drop his hands. He tried. His fingers wouldn’t listen. “’M’leaving.”  
  
But still, he hardly moved. He tried to think of what he wanted next, where to go, but the world blurred every time he opened his eyes, and Sylvain was still many men, and not one insufferable idiot.  
  
“Okay, sure, that’s fine. We can go wherever you wanna go.” Again, Sylvain turned back to Dimitri. Dimitri now stood as well, a hand hard over the table to support his own sway, but he stood, and he now looked at Sylvain with a familiar, weighty gaze. A gaze that screamed, _ absolutely screamed, _ of guilt.  
  
Sylvain cursed inside of his mind. He cursed loudly and angrily, as if he could rattle the stars with the power of his own self-hatred and guilt and bottomless, bottomless anger. Then he sighed.  
  
He turned back to Dimitri, then, within a heartbeat, back to face Felix. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”  
  
_ Sorry, I didn’t know Felix was attempting to drown himself in wine while we laughed about one of the final memories of his brother, sorry, I am so sorry. _  
  
“It’s all right.” Dimitri was at Felix’s side, his expression tight and withheld. He gripped carefully at Felix’s elbow to steady him. “Felix? It’s alright. Really. I’m sorry, too. We didn’t mean to upset you.”  
  
Felix stared up at Dimitri’s face. His black eyes were dilated, huge and dark and unable to process the entirety of the expression over Dimitri’s face. Was it pity? Was it hate? Was it sadness? Felix felt himself growl, honest to Sothis, and he wanted to spit into His Highness’s fuckng face, but the air was gone from inside of him, and he felt as if there wasn’t enough. He threw out his hands to get away from Dimitri, away from Sylvain, and staggered out into a free fall—one that narrowly took him into the garden’s thorn bushes, had Sylvain not used a quick, half-crocked levitation spell to push Felix back towards them.  
  
The sudden force of not falling, not quite standing, once again too close to two warm bodies that wouldn’t let go of him caused Felix to panic. But it never left his insides, his brain. He let all of the air leave him at once, as if he could somehow die from refusing to breathe.  
  
But he had to breathe. The pain had torn into both lungs like fiery, spindly fingers that squeezed until he cried out—he wanted to cry out, he wanted to _ scream _ at them both— but then he was crying—and he refused to let that happen. He couldn't let that happen. Not here. Not out loud.  
  
So he stopped. It wasn’t easy to be still. It wasn’t easy to stop shaking. But he could be quiet.  
  
He could swallow himself in the sullen gracelessness of crying without a sound.  
  
Sylvain and Dimitri resisted not simply staring at one another, confused and a little scared.  
  
Sylvain had seen Felix drunk before, but this was so...different. While drinking, Felix always seemed to loosen up a little. He smiled easier, he laughed harder, he seemed to want to say the things he clearly only kept deep inside of his head— but he wasn’t a sad drunk. He wasn’t someone that would cry like this.  
  
Dimitri, clearly, felt just as ashamed. While he only had the one eye to express himself, it beheld Felix like a pale whirlpool: doubt, awkwardness, shame, pity, all twisting in fast circles that cycled without an answer. Dimitri just stared at Felix’s barely contained sobbing, unmoving, unspeaking, but his brows eased back into acceptance. His Grace told a lot without needing words. Sylvain couldn’t imagine the peacefulness of that sort of feeling.  
  
Sylvain knew his own body. He knew that his mouth was eighty-nine percent the best part of himself, because the rest of him he couldn’t be certain of. Like how he wasn’t so certain about his face sometimes, if he smiled a decent smile, if his eyes looked happy or just scornful, if the lady of the hour had noticed his shortened words because she’d started bitching about Crests and money, how his snipped breathing flared out like smoke, chewing just below the edge of a tea table’s delicate tapestry.  
  
Words were all Sylvain had some days.  
  
He tried them now, knowing it was a path with a dark, dark dead end.  
  
“Felix.” Sylvain felt his face crumple away, the dream of the evening gone. “Hey, easy.” He tugged at Felix’s arm to steady him back against his chest, but still, Felix said nothing.  
  
“Don’t.” Dimitri seemed to struggle with what he wanted Sylvain to do. But he pushed Sylvain away from Felix, his pale eye balancing between the two, the edge of a knife. “I don’t think he wants either of us too close.”  
  
Another angry sigh. “Well, fuck me, right? Can’t do anything right. _ Fuck.” _  
  
“You didn’t know. And neither did I.” Dimitri said. The words felt heavy. “I thought Felix was…” Dimitri let the thought linger, unexplained. “But…” He shook his head.  
  
He watched Felix’s breathing quicken, some uncontrollable panic clear cross his pale face. Dimitri padded carefully beside him, probably the true hero of the night, the real one between them that had the physical strength to lift Felix’s dead weight between them without sagging them forward too many times. “Take his other arm. I don’t want to leave him alone like this.”  
  
Sylvain nodded. He kept his eyes forward, searching the grounds with an empty, anxious gaze. The heads of the morning flowers closed up tight in the dead of night, like the seemingly hundreds of doors locked in the monastery. He could feel sweat collecting at his armpits, at the back of his neck, dripping over his chest. He was going to smell awful for Dorothea.  
  
This wasn’t good. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. And, sorry about racking up old memories and everything, but neither he nor Dimitri were in any state to make sure Felix didn’t—oh, Sylvain wasn’t sure—probably attempt to go out training again, blind drunk and falling on his own sword, or drowning in the pond, or perhaps the worst fate of all?  
  
For Felix continuing to stand there, threatening to fall entirely apart on half-curled knees, his shoulders rising with violent, half-muffled sobs. That Felix would be all alone, all night, unable to accept help from anyone, unable to comprehend anything beyond the fact that he was alive and his brother was not and the world would never be safe again.  
  
“Yeah. I’m, um, thinkin’ that, too.”  
  
“Sh—” Dimitri had begun a word but it shifted inside of his lips, and he had to swallow again to allow it freedom from his messy thoughts. “So,” he began again, the word tight and clipped as it would have been normally, struggling to take back the diction lessons from his step-mother, a lifetime ago, where she’d tapped his knee-cap none too softly with a bowled end of a teaspoon for each time he had stuttered. “Where should we take him? Manuela? Just anyone else more sober than us?”  
  
Sylvain turned back, his expression a little sly, a little sad, and a little nervous. “Oh. I got that part handled. Just, um. Follow my lead.”  
  
Dimitri paused. He may be drunk but he knew that look. He was well-practiced in talking Sylvain down from needless errors, so many years of reading Sylvain’s face, scouring for an ounce of truth wedge between his every lie. “I don’t want any trouble, Sylvain.”  
  
“Trouble? No, no.” Sylvain amended at once. “She’ll be happy to see him.”  
  
“She?” Dimitri wondered, a touch disbelieving.  
  
_ I think, _ Sylvain’s last doubt took a swift swing at him, but he turned on his heel just in time to avoid it with some sense of grace. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Annette, in her too-loose nightgown, looked as if she would have rather been told the that monastery was on fire than see Sylvain, as well as His Highness, outside of her bedroom door.  
  
“Hey,” Sylvain tugged at the end of the word until it was just a senseless, keening sound from his mouth. “Anniieee,” he then dragged her name around for a second too, hoping the empty seconds would cook up a better reason to be dragging his piss-drunk friend to her door at 3 am, but, ah well, improvising would be just fine, right? “So. I know you’re busy, sleeping or something, but ah…”  
  
“It’s my fault.” Dimitri’s voice cut over Sylvain's loitering explanation.  
  
Sylvain nearly dropped his half of Felix’s weight. _ No, no, no, no, no, stop talking, Dimitri, _ his mind raced, but nope, there Dimitri went, somehow completely unchanging in his willingness to accept a burden that definitely was not _ his _ fault, _ fuck. _  
  
Annette’s wide blue eyes jumped back and forth between their faces, never lingering too long over either expression there, confusion steadily turning into anger. Her large eyes settled over Felix’s flushed face, dirty and wet. He looked as if he was staring completely through her. Her cute cheeks flushed a hot fiery red. A hand popped to her hip, waiting for an answer.  
  
“It’s your fault, _ what?” _ _  
_  
“Sylvain and I.” Annette had to slow down her King’s words to keep them straight. Dimitri had slurred Sylvain’s name, sticky inside of his mouth, and it only added to the complete nonsense she felt they were spewing at her, frumpled awake at 3 am to the sound of loud, half-terrifying banging upon her door. “We got to drinking, obv’ously, ‘nd we hadn’t noticed that Felix, ah, drank far too much, and we were hoping that someone, um, not drunk, that is to say, would take him in?”  
  
“You _ what?” _ Annette asked again, an even more angry statement than question.  
  
Dimitri went to speak again, but in a panic, Sylvain threw out his foot to step hard over Dimitri’s boot, and he prayed to whatever Gods that there were that Dimitri would _ shut up _ and _l__et him talk. _ _  
_  
A disconcerting yelp of pain from Dimitri caused Annette’s head to snap to look at him, but then Sylvain was speaking, quickly, way too quickly:  
  
_ “OkaysowereallygottagobutweknowFelixwouldratherbeherethananywherelesesopleasepleasepleasetakehimwearesosorrygoodbye!” _

And, very unceremoniously, she found herself holding Felix tightly inside of her arms as he was pushed into her.  
  
Then, she watched as Sylvain pulled back from the door, as if he was about to start running.  
  
But she had been stunned by the sudden drop of Felix’s tall unsteady frame over her small body, and how he crumpled into her, the entirety of him limp and graceless. She struggled to pull herself up to glare sweet full-fired _ Eternal Flames _ levels of anger at the two quickly retreating forms of Sylvain, dragging along Dimitri behind him. Two idiot school boys who had pulled a truly terrible prank, been caught, and were running like mad that she’d fly out the door after them.  
  
“You’re a lifesaver, Anniee!” Sylvain cried out, long into the dark, and Annette wondered how someone so damn stupid ever made his way into Garreg Mach.  
  
Her fingers tightened into tiny fists that collected the fabric of Felix’s shirt.  
  
What the _ fuck? _ They wouldn’t get away with this! Annette swore to them. She promised this to the night, to the fact that she was having the best sleep after weeks of war-stressing; she’d kill them, she absolutely would.  
  
And Annette would have.  
  
Gladly.

Except that Felix’s face was wet against her nightgown.  
  
And that had made her pause, because she’d never felt his face quite so damp before.  
  
She had felt him sweat, absolutely, and the way he looked when he took a cooling dive into the pond (not that she peeked too often to spy his half-naked body...often, per say, it was more just...a reasonable amount of ogling). And she could smell the scent of grasses over his clothes, and how for whatever reason, one leg of his pant’s legs was darkened into a liquid-looking stain, and, of course, most obviously, how Felix absolutely _ reeked _ of wine.  
  
What had those two done? She pushed him up again, struggling to balance them both at the door’s frame, and, with a surreal panic, wondered if she had somehow been brought someone gravely injured, too weak to care for himself.  
  
“F-felix?” Annette squeaked.  
  
He didn’t respond. Not even a little.  
  
Annette promised herself she won’t panic. Not entirely. Not yet.  
  
She sunk herself low onto her knees and carefully balanced him against her. Her arms locked around the middle of his back. She could feel him breathing, which was good. Those two dingbats hadn’t killed him and dumped a body at her feet, but they were at least able to walk, if not run, and speak semi-coherently. Which, if logic suited her at all, meant Felix was just about as drunk as them, if not a little worse off, and she could handle that.  
  
She was pretty sure she could, anyway.  
  
Annette collected the side of Felix’s face within the palm of her hand. His eyes were half-opened, loosely staring at her, and slowly they started to close. She tried not to panic, to yell too loudly at him, as if that would make anything better, but she needed an answer, like an answer for her right damn now, just to make sure he wasn’t more than metaphorically dying in her arms.

“Felix?” Annette let the tips of her fingers push the long strains of his hair away from his eyes. “Honey?”  
  
His eyes didn’t open but his lips parted slightly. “‘ette?”  
  
“Hi. Um. Hi.”  
  
“Hey.” He breathed back at her; that single gentle word was a long string of air, as if he hadn’t been exhaling for such a long time, and finally found that he could.  
  
He cracked his eyes open to see her, but then he winced, deeply, in pain. Annette quickly made a mental note to hush out the candle near her dresser. Still, the gently glowing flame allowed her to study Felix better. The yellow light illuminated the ragged bits of grass caught in his hair. The dampness along his back and the layer of dry dirt beneath her hands made Annette worry that he had hurt himself. A shallow cut etched itself thinly around the back of his neck as she inspected him. Her fingers traced again to touch at his pale face, and again, she felt wetness.  
  
It felt different than the water at his back. Warmer, somehow.  
  
She kept her voice even. She knew better than to ask such a silly question, as if Dimitri or Sylvain would be so selfish as to drop Felix, critically injured at her door. They never would but...she had to figure out why he was...crying?  
  
“Felix, are you okay? Are you hurt?”  
  
He didn’t seem to hear her. “...’ou doin’ here?”  
  
“Um.” She resisted a nervous laugh. “You came to me?”  
  
“No?” he stirred further, a legless attempt to untangle himself from her arms but by all accounts he accomplished very little. He dragged his palms back behind him to sit back, but she felt him give an involuntary jerk, as if about to fall, and she collected him back to her. She felt him resist her, only for a heartbeat, all the muscles of his back tight against the palm of her hand, but then he leaned into her, heavy and weak. “I didn’t.”  
  
She held him up, this time far easier from a lower position of gravity. He didn’t feel so much like a doll and she didn’t feel too helpless to help him move. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re fine with me.”  
  
His eyes opened, black and unfocused, but he shook his head, convinced she wasn’t telling him the truth. “No, ‘ette. No.” He stopped shaking his head. A hand moved to touch his face and he grimaced beneath it. “No.” He sighed. “I can’t stop spinnin.”  
  
She felt her heart twinge. He sounded in pain. Genuine pain. And that wasn’t so cute. “Felix?”  
  
“Huh?” He blinked at her. His eyes opened and then closed in a strange, unnatural delay, and she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. She had thought before that he’d just be normal drunk, like, the kind of whine-like layer to Sylvain's flamboyant annoyingness or the way Ferdinand just got...louder…but Felix, of course, looked more broken down by it. All of his energy that went into performing his best to reject the entire world had come pouring back inside of him, overwhelmingly insecure, staring at Annette as if she could save him from all of that _ feeling. _  
  
Her heart unfurled inside of her chest. She moved her hands to gently push his hair behind his ears. He moved with her as if he couldn’t help it, as if it felt more natural to move than be still and she could feel the unsteady sway of him move towards her, only to sway away again. She wished she could tell him with just her hands that he didn’t have to hold himself together anymore. He followed the movement of her arm but his eyes stayed open to look at her, looking at him, and she felt her face flush.  
  
Annette instantly realized what she’d opened her door to find.  
  
His eyes were completely dilated, not from light, not from seeing her, but because he was absolutely, completely, undisputedly _wasted. _ _  
_  
“How much did you drink tonight?”  
  
“Dunno.” He grunted.  
  
“You don’t even know?” She softened the edge of her voice. She wanted to be mad. She wanted to lecture him about this kind of thing. But she didn’t. She was a fool for it, all of it, and she knew it. “But you told me you don’t even like drinking.”  
  
He had wanted to look at her more closely; he had to get closer to her, because her cute face had turned into a blurry, murky image, but the motion toppled him forward. He had wanted to kiss her and completely missed. Except he wasn’t trying to kiss her. Annette wasn’t sure exactly what Felix wanted. His face was pressed against her shoulder, then her throat, until he slid down cumsly to the space at her chest, pillowed there.  
  
“ ...Every time Dimitri said ‘is name.” She felt him jerk lightly against her, just for a moment, and she realized he had hiccuped. “They wouldn’t shut up.” He jerked again. “I just wanted ‘em to _ stop.” _ _  
_  
“Stop talking? Is that what you guys were doing?” Annette wondered gently. She felt him hiccup for a third time, and the way he twisted against her, it looked like it hurt him. In an attempt to ease his body, she reached up to tap at the water basin and cup she had kept, where her dresser sat nearest to the door. “Here. Water? Just a little?” He leaned away from her, his lips tightened into a thin line. She pulled the cup back. He clearly didn’t want to risk drinking anything else and she tried not to let that worry her too much.  
  
“No,” he gasped the word tight against her. “Please, no.”  
  
“Okay, sure.” She set it down and returned to rest her hands across his lower back. She couldn’t help but nervously tug at the back of his shirt. She’d never really dealt with a drunk person before, so she wasn’t entirely sure what the next steps were.  
  
She felt him hiccup again and again. Until the flickering of his lungs had splintered itself into a brittle sound, something with a new edge of pain. The space between her breasts felt steadily damper. Her hands froze, the soft fabric of his shirt falling from between her fingers.  
  
“Felix?” A hand moved protectively to cup the back of his head. She laced her fingers through the loose curls of his hair, unable to do much more than hold him to her. She dropped her voice as softly as she could. “It’s okay. We don’t have to talk anymore.” She tried to test what he wanted, if he wanted to be held tighter, or held at all. “This is fine. This is just fine with me.”  
  
Felix swallowed a breath but the sound shattered inside of his mouth. Felix suddenly wrapped himself around her, the sharp angles of his face digging into the flat plane of her chest. She wished, just for a moment, that she had been built better. More fat or breast or something, so that it didn’t hurt so much as he crushed himself towards her, but she couldn’t possibly push him away. He was in pain. It only made sense she might share some of it.

And, just like that, no rhyme or reason to see so far, Felix was sobbing, absolutely bawling against her. She had expected he’d swallow the sounds as he usually did. She had thought he’d try to make a break for the damned door, and she’d have to probably trap him against the floor, some wild, heartbreaking, attempt that he couldn’t let anyone see him this way.  
  
But he didn’t.  
  
He just sat in her lap and cried. She could feel the tears, hot, endless, meet the warm skin at her chest, to crawl, like small streams, downwards, racing down her stomach, patterning into droplets into the skin of her bare thighs. She moved her hand back through his hair, gentle and slow, and felt as if she might snap in two herself. It would have been easier to fight him along the floor. It would have been somehow more bearable to fight Felix into emotional submission.  
  
But she didn’t have too.  
  
He had just crawled into her lap and... _ sobbed. _ _  
_ _  
_ His shoulders shook forcefully with every breath. Each time he breathed in Annette felt the harsh, shallow inhale rip through his mouth, the sound of it wracking through her own bones. She felt own lungs constrict and she realized with a sharp, bitter taste that, perhaps, Felix had never been held while he cried. And, perhaps, she was the first of many times for Felix. First to see him truly laugh, first to see him drift asleep despite himself, unable to keep up with her questions and words as they talked, later and later and later into the night…  
  
First to talk about Glenn.  
  
Annette wasn’t a complete screw up. She knew what today was.  
  
Everyone knew what today was.  
  
She just wasn’t so insincere to pretend like the burning of her kingdom had hurt her the way it had hurt so many of her friends. Sure, the massacre caused her father to abandon her and her mother but….she was here, wasn’t she? And that mattered. And she tried not to think about it too often. She tried not to let the pain of being an unwanted child ache too deeply. Her mother still loved her. And, who knows, maybe if she’d been born a boy, Annette wouldn’t been abandoned, or maybe her entire life wouldn’t have happened exactly as she wanted it too. She didn’t care. She’d put in the work. She went to the finest school of magic in the Kingdom’s capital and then made it into _ the _ Garreg Mach. She couldn’t wallow too deeply inside of that kind of sadness.  
  
She didn’t _ technically _ lose anyone.  
  
She wouldn’t allow herself to pretend she could understand. She most definitely couldn’t.  
  
And...for Felix to lose both his brother and his father…  
  
The pain was _ palpable _ through him. She could feel the unfolding of sharp, unspoken things dragging themselves out of him; horrible and terrifying, little broken sounds of grief and guilt that had grown thin, tear-like wings that spoiled the comforting air. Cold, raw, the beating of the black wave of it all pouring out, too big, too much, too impossible to contain any longer inside of him. But she had seen the miracle that the Professor seemed to rip out of Dimitri during that long, endlessly rainy night, where he had somehow turned back to some sense of self, as if he had just been lost this whole time, but he had found some path back home...  
  
Was this the same for Felix? Was she a path to follow?  
  
Annette just held him tighter. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t move an inch.  
  
She could just… be here. And that wasn’t enough, but maybe it could be something for him to hold onto for just tonight. For as long as he possibly wanted.

* * *

  
Annette didn’t realize it was over by the time that it was. Time didn’t seem to matter. Nothing really did, until, slowly Annette found the feeling of Felix’s heaves against her growing softer. He was breathing easier through his mouth. She hadn’t moved, although her arms ached, her chest ached, and her heart hurt, too, from the sudden, endless sound of someone so wonderful drowning in their grief, unable to resurface by their own hand.  
  
Annette had contemplated pulling Felix out of it. She wouldn’t let him go too far under. She was too scared of that. That terrible idea, beyond tonight, lingering over the wind. Even the mere act of thinking the thought might make it come true. That if Felix was capable of sinking so hard and so fast, helpless at her reaching back for him, the way she’d seen Mercedes looking at Dimitri, and if he’d…  
  
If he’d somehow disappear from her. Because she wasn’t good enough to save him.  
  
Felix raised his head back up. His dark eyes had swollen, raw and red, at the delicate edge of their water lines, irritated, sore from every blink. She tried to make her expression feel comfortable, safe for whatever he needed next from her. Because, as he had cried in her arms, drunk and unstable and unable to hold back his pain, Felix stared up at her like she couldn’t be real.  
  
“Annette,” the sound of her name in his mouth sounded soft, scared. “You’re here?” She felt him moving again to pull himself away from her. It didn’t seem quite so uncoordinated this time, but she reached out her hand to take his own, just to make sure he didn’t move too far from her.  
  
“Yeah. Still here.” She paused, a little nervous, as if this wasn’t her room and he hadn’t basically crawled into her sleeping space like he'd always belonged there. “Is that okay?”  
  
“Uh.” He stared at the floor, careful to avoid her eyes. “M’ sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be.”  
  
“No. I…” he paused. For a moment, Annette wondered if Felix was going to tell her this was some kind of a mistake. That he’d need to go. That she shouldn’t have seen what she had. And, for a moment, Annette felt that lock around her heart’s door turning, hardening against the final words, that he regretted coming to her. That it wasn’t enough. That she wasn’t enough and—“‘’M’really drunk, huh? I don’t...I don’t feel well.”  
  
Annette stared at him. He lifted his eyes to meet hers. “Felix, what?”  
  
He looked startled. “What?”  
  
A hand covered her mouth. “Oh, Felix, I…”  
  
“What?” That normal edge of annoyance echoed faintly in that little question. Clearly, he hadn’t noticed the complete unraveling of Annette’s emotional state...or anything else, really, as he looked blearily around the room, unsure of where they were. “Are we...in your room?”  
  
He moved his dark brows over her but their usual fracturing of moving her heart to flutter was gone. In its place, he just looked nervous, confused, steadily more annoyed about it, too, as if he had no idea what he was doing here with her.  
  
Annette allowed one giggle. “Wow, jerk, don’t sound too ticked off about it.”  
  
“I’m not—” he began hotly, except the words tangled themselves around his tongue, too many syllables at once, and he flustered, his face a flash of red for a moment, straight to the tips of his ears, before he crushed his teeth together. He held his face inside of his hands once more.  
  
Annette made up the thin distance he had created between them. She carefully pulled away his hands to better look at him, just in case he was going to honestly end up sick in her bedroom. “What can I do? I have water, if you want any.”  
  
He groaned. He pressed his face into her hand to hide. “...feels like m’dying,”  
  
She grinned, just a little. “Definitely. Welcome to the Eternal Flames; I’ll be your warden.”  
  
“Not funny.” Here, Felix would have glared at her, but as a complete mess, he gave a little laugh himself, light from his chest, and she felt her heart skip to hear it.  
  
She tried not to revel in her wit. He clearly was still too drunk for it. It wasn’t a fair fight. She wrapped her arms back around him. “So. What now?”  
  
“Mm.” He stated bluntly. He moved against her again, haphazardly, probably unable to tell where the floor began and her lap ended, as he crawled into her lap, his arms, too long, too warm and uncertain, suddenly all over her at once, holding her down. “Don’t move s’much.”  
  
“Please. That’s my line.” Annette replied cleanly. She was careful to untie his arms from around her neck or awkwardly under her leg, as he was pinning her to the floor. Felix, her Felix, a sweet, complete joke, trying to change this as if he had control? Adorable. “Hey. Relax. I’m not going to go away.”  
  
“Good, good,” Felix nodded into her skin. “You smell _s'good.”_  
  
“You’ve told me.” Annette purred. She played with his hair, weaving out some lost blades of grass. “Did you fall earlier?”  
  
“Um.” He had to think about that answer. To Annette, that said so much more than the real story.  
  
“And your pants are wet because…?”  
  
“Oh.” He sounded pretty unconcerned by this detail. “Um. Wine.”  
  
“I think ‘wine’ explains pretty much everything about this conversation.”  
  
“Mhm.” Was he...agreeing with her?  
  
She laughed again. Felix, he was such a beautiful mess. But, at least he’d calmed down, and seemed a bit more aware than earlier. And he wasn’t dying, as much as he claimed to be. “Okay. New question. The floor is super uncomfortable.” She lifted his head up as he had snuggled tighter against her, his breath tickling the sensitive skin of her neck. “So, lay down with me?”  
  
Suddenly, his grip over her tightened. “...don’t wan’ t’move.” He dug his nose harder into her neck. “Makes the room move.”  
  
She felt a little mean but he was drunk and probably couldn’t feel how long they had been on the floor together, and so she was going to win this round. “If you want me, you’ll totally move three extra feet to my bed.”  
  
He leaned against her, most of his weight practically falling into her lap. “‘Lease, don’t leave me.”  
  
Again, Annette tried not to laugh too much at him. She felt there was still a fragile line between what Felix understood to be a jest, and what actually might make him start crying again. “I’d never do that. But, we are going to lie in my bed; you’ll thank me in just a minute.”

That seemed to woo him over pretty easily. But, strangely, she watched as Felix blindly pulled away from her and then towards his pants, as if she’d had asked him to take them off. She quickly gathered his hands inside of hers. “Is something wrong?”  
  
A strange sound answered her. Somewhere between a sigh and laugh. “I feel wet. I’d wanna be com’f’m—” he struggled over the word. The chewiness of the second ‘o’ escaped him, too much over numb slow lips, before he gave up on it entirely. “Um. With you.”  
  
“Oh. Right.” She tapped a finger at her chin. Well. Too late now. She moved her hands quickly. She didn’t know how or why she’d gotten so good at taking off his pants, but here she was, the star student of useless skills. She pulled herself off of the floor, grasping Felix’s hands inside of hers to balance him to stand, and thusly step out of his pants.  
  
Amazingly, it worked. His pants slid off without a hassle and, furthermore, she had managed to lead Felix to actually flop over her bed, which he did without the usual appeal or grace of a swordsman. He moved more like he’d been punched one too many times in the stomach.  
  
Annette moved his legs so that he wasn’t so tightly curled, hoping he’d find it more comfortable. Then, with her own lack of grace, she threw herself down beside him, uncaring how the pillows bounced a little, or, in her mistaken celebration, that Felix would flinch away from the movement, his arms suddenly protecting his face to spare himself the visual of the bed, plunging down, the ground opening up, and the disorientation of his body not actually falling through something too soft, too giving. It made his stomach contract in a tight, painful stretch that left him breathless.  
  
“Sorry! Sorry, Felix. I didn’t mean to make it worse.” Annette amended at once. She kept her distance for a moment.  
  
“Hh’.” Felix told her, slowly, finally, after what felt like far too many heartbeats of waiting. She was almost hopeful he had simply laid right down and gone to sleep. That was definitely what he needed the most right now. She had only ever toyed with wine, but looking as drunk as Felix did right now, it was not an experience she could say she wanted to share.  
  
After a while, she couldn’t hold back from wanting to touch him again. She allowed her hands to reach through the darkness, towards the quiet of his breathing, to lightly move her fingers over the side of his face. Surprisingly, Felix moved against her fingers. His lips faintly twitched as he recognized the movement of her strokes over his cheek. She felt him sigh softly against her open palm.  
  
“See?” She allowed herself to breathe out slowly. “So much better.”  
  
“Mh’n,” Felix nuzzled against her hand, a simple sound that had gotten lost in his chest.  
  
Annette allowed herself to move in closer, far closer, and through the numbness ringing through his body, he could feel the outline of her warmth; it was like a thick curve of flame that was melting through her dress, into his clothes, under his skin, and while his stomach didn’t agree with the idea of moving, he pushed himself up to take a little leap of faith at her neck. He wanted the space where her hair felt the softest, and how the darkness of her body pressed impossibly close to him made the world slow, a little unsteady and turning, but so much better than when he was alone, without someone to grab onto.  
  
Annette caught onto to Felix’s clumsy, overreaching wanting of her; his near misses and weak attempts to touch her. Finally, she helped push him close onto her, until her breasts felt a little tight against his chest. For a moment, she worried if perhaps Felix could feel how hard her heart was beating, to be completely intertwined within him. His pants off, loose and uncoiled along her bed, and that he was so completely useless— his mouth, his eyes, his legs, his hands, to really do much more than cling back onto her as if he’d fall back without her there to keep him safe.  
  
His head had fallen into the crook of her neck. He gave out a hum, a real one, and Annette forced back a chuckle, because Felix usually left the musical bits of her relationship to her, and he never, not once, not ever, tried to treat her with anything like a song. But he hummed again, his lips moving across her skin, slow and dizzying, distracting himself with every part of her.  
  
“You’re adorable.” Annette told him simply. She moved to press her cheek into his hair. “I thought I was the whimsical one who likes music?”  
  
“Mm,” Felix happily told her again. His tongue lapped at her throat, messily trailing up her ear and into her hair. He pulled away once he collected a bit of her hair into his mouth, unable to push it back away from his numb lips. A strange sound rattled Annette’s jaw. Somewhere between needing her skin and wanting to be away from her hair. Annette gave a laugh and helped Felix correct his face back to her neck. Where, all at once he started humming again, much louder this time.  
  
Damn, he was so endlessly, stupidly cute. And that little, happy, overly-content hum? She couldn’t help it. She locked her arms tight over his chest to squeeze him into a hug. He was so cute and it was so cute and this was so not fair.  
  
“Uh,” Now the sound changed. It sounded wetter, like a gag-reflex kind of sound, like a too-much-too-fast-your-boyfriend-is-drunk-kind of sound. She let go at once. She could feel the give of his mouth, a sloppy frantic rush to close himself off from her.  
  
“S'orry.” He breathed, his voice mussy and drowsy. He sounded better. Annette allowed her muscles to relax. “Too tight.”  
  
“Still don’t feel good, huh?” She hushed softly. She moved his hair back behind his ears, then rested her fingers along his forehead. “I’m really sorry. I don’t know if anything but time will help that.”  
  
He breathed against her again. He felt like he might be floating here with her. The bed was so soft and she was so warm. If only the world just stopped moving, just for a minute. “Ugh.”  
  
“If you go to sleep, you won’t have to deal with this.”  
  
He moved closer to her again, clearly uncaring of what his body wanted him to do. She had to help him most of the way, carefully arranging herself to pull Felix against her chest without feeling crushed by the limp weight of him, desperate to feel her skin. “No.”  
  
“Why don’t you want to sleep?” She whispered against his lips.  
  
He tried to trace the words back over her lips. Every time she spoke, their lips touched, and it felt like kissing her. “I don’t want that.”  
  
She smirked. He felt one side of her lip lift, the right side, and he wanted to laugh, if he could, at how fucking cute that was, when she looked all puzzled about something, although he couldn’t remember why she had smiled.  
  
“‘That’?” Felix was always so cutting and self-assured with each of his words. Now, it was like a riddle meant to fluster her. “‘That’ as in sleep?” She moved; her hand was back in his hair. He loved that, her hand through his hair was like an even weight that kept the room from spinning too fast. Felix’s reached out his tongue to lick at her bottom lip. She tasted faintly of wine, or maybe that was just him, the taste of it still moving through his blood, thick and hot and overly sweet.  
  
She giggled. His tongue tickled her. His breath smelled of white grapes. “Why not?”  
  
“You kno’what I want.” The words felt heinously slow, nearly impossible to get out of his mouth. Felix tried to keep them from sticking behind his teeth. Fine. Didn’t matter. He could show her want he wanted. "Wanna be with you."  
  
He slowly brought his hand up to touch at her cheek, to bring her face closer to his, but he stopped when she made a sound of surprise. A dull pulse in the back of his brain reminded him that she was tiny, and he was drunk, wow, extremely, almost painfully _ drunk, _ as if he had forgotten about that part for a moment.  
  
She was staring quite meaningfully at him now. Her lips did that pursed thing, where they looked full and biteable, and he imagined kissing her. He could do that, at least. He eyes slipped closed, sinking into the bed beneath him, ignoring the hot coiling of the darkness that was blanketing over him, reminding him that he was definitely not sober. But he had this part memorized, imagining Annette here with him. He had before. He had so many times. He thought about it all the time, perhaps too much, and here, in a bed, he wondered if she was really here. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe he just really wished she was. But her eyes? Those felt real. Like she was already there, warm and soft, and he felt his mouth gasp open, better awake.  
  
She had taken just edge of his lower lip in between her teeth and bit down, carefully, just a tiny pinch.  
  
His tongue felt so heavy inside of his mouth. “D’you bite me?”  
  
Her blue eyes looked not so innocent. “Sorry.” She muffled her face into the pillow.  
  
“N’fair.” He said to her pout. He dragged his head to rest against her lips, barely able to chase after her. She couldn’t hide away from him now. He felt scared when he couldn’t see her. He felt lost and too hot and too drunk and he wanted her to stay as close to him as possible.  
  
She peeked at him from behind the edge of a pillow.  
  
He swallowed shallowly. Her blue eyes reminded him of water and the thought of more liquid made his stomach twist unhappily. But he had found her arm, and he brought it a little ways up to touch her warm, so warm, amazingly warm skin to his cold lips. She was breathing, feeling back into his face, and he wanted to taste that warmth inside of his mouth, between his lips, under the tips of his teeth...  
  
He moaned against her skin, allowing his teeth to sink into it, little by little, letting the taste of salt overtake the taste of wine. This time, the sound she made definitely didn’t sound like surprise—it felt weaker than that, a faint inhale of breath that froze her into place. She kept her arm still, allowing Felix to bite her—quite painfully—before he let go, and, clearly, some incoherent thought had pulled away from him, because he blinked at her greedily, his dark eyes focused so tightly over her face, as if he couldn’t decide if he’d eaten enough of her yet.  
  
Her hand had flown to touch at his waist. She allowed the light tips of her nails to finely trail over the exposed skin of his legs, over the swell of well-trained muscle, and she heard that wonderful, completely unashamed hum again, higher from the back of his throat, and he moved against her, full-bodied, wanting so much more than just her fingertips.  
  
“Felix,” she breathed, another giggle, because he had drunkenly started to grind against her, lazily moving his hips as if that would accomplish absolutely anything between them, but it made her laugh. “Do you even know where you are right now? Seriously.”  
  
“Um.” He thought for a long moment. His hips never stopped their easy, heavy dance against her threadbare dress, slowly growing more inclined with sweat, with warmth, against her waist. “With you.”  
  
Annette rolled her eyes to the ceiling. He was cute and stupid and this so wasn’t going to happen. “How about a place? I’ll give you a hint: I sleep here.”  
  
“A bed?”  
  
“Honestly, you sound like it’s a question when that should be the answer.”  
  
“Sh’was right,” Felix slurred at her, fully grinning, and Annette could feel how proud he was about that win, because she could feel the outline of his canines, pointy against the pulse point of her neck. “You smell so good.”  
  
Then, with a hot, wet pressure, Felix’s mouth opened to take her neck, and, just like that, he bit her for a second time. He felt her gasp beneath him, and the world spun tighter, faster. A needle-thin point that stabbed at the back of his brain, a little lingering fear that was scared he’d hurt her. Suddenly she grabbed at the back of his head and pulled, sharply, and that little whispering sound had turned into her own personal growl—her, his Annette, taking back the power away from him, conducting the whole damn thing—and, again, the room spun faster. Her hands grabbed tightly at the back of his head. She was suddenly inside of his mouth, that little tongue of hers demanding some type of payment for biting her so rudely.  
  
And then she didn’t stop. And the room wasn’t stopping. And Felix suddenly found himself struggling under the weight of Annette pressing down onto him. His legs felt impossible to move, heavier than plate-mail, and when he couldn’t, his entire body electric and numb and pounding beneath him, he let out a whimper that caused Annette to stop at once.  
  
“Felix?” Her voice was high and scared.  
  
He felt robbed of his lungs. “Fas’. Was...too fast.”  
  
She felt all shivery to him, but it was hard to say, because his own nerves felt jittery beneath every inch of exposed skin. “Okay. I can do that. We can go slow. We’ll do that. Slow as you want, then.”  
  
Felix felt his breath fall back into him. The darkness of the room looked watery and thick, almost as if he could touch it. He almost tried, until he realized he was running his fingers back and forth over the curves of Annette’s body, the dip of her hips, the drop between her breasts, the small softness of her shoulders. Suddenly, Felix felt unsure of touching her, how tightly he might grab her. He couldn’t feel his fingers well. Or his legs. Or, now that he was laying down, the rest of him, a pleasant, radiating rush of warmth that seemed to wash over him, and fall away, leaving him a tad colder, and he’d snuggle back into Annette with a little more force than he had meant to, causing her to squeak back, or shift backwards, slowly moving her towards the edge of her bed, towards the wall where there soon would be no more space for her move towards, and where Felix’s attempts to hold her closer and closer would catch up with his wishes.  
  
The boy was ruthless in what he wanted...even when Annette was quite sure he wasn’t at all certain of what that was. She knew Felix was many, many things, but surely he wouldn’t beg her with those dark eyes, as if he’d die without her. That would be absolutely….  
  
“Please,” his dark eyes burned up at her, truly beyond black, as if he had swallowed the entire light of her bedroom, the candle, the face of the moon, along with the wine that had brought him here. Annette felt all of her insides positivity _squirm_ at the sight of him, slow and needy and begging to be touched.  
  
“Um.” She glared at him flatly. This wasn’t fair. Him being drunk wasn’t fair. Felix being drunk and begging her wasn’t fair. Was this the Goddess testing her to be a good girl? Annette brought up her hand to grip at her hair, resisting the temptation to scoot Felix straight out of her door and to hop into her bed and pretend that the low, flaring fire that had sparked inside of her belly was sin, pure terrible, selfish sin, leaving her.  
  
But.  
  
She eased off the frustration in her eyes, watching the tension that had flooded Felix’s face slowly leave him. He wasn’t...right in this way. He was easily convinced of whatever expression she wore over her face. And she didn’t want him to think that she didn’t want him, or that he was doing something wrong for, uh, wanting her.  
  
She looked at her wooden door. She thought about scooping him off of the bed and easing him out and just, she wasn’t sure, hoping he’d find his way back to his own room, sleep off his horny, drunken, needy, sweet, adorable…  
  
She covered her face. She felt her teeth suddenly bite into the heel of her hands. She squeezed the force of her fingers back over her mouth.  
  
She was a terrible, awful, no-good person, and Mercie would absolutely kill her.  
  
She returned to the bed. She lifted his face to pull his mouth back to her. She had all the power this time, although, it wasn’t nearly as fun as the last; when he had been aware and there was a fight against her every move like a hot, uncompromising game of chess between their bodies. But now, just under her lips, Felix made this long, low sound inside his chest. A hot rush of air that he breathed into her mouth; he had _ melted _ into her choice to take him.  
  
He was already hard beneath her, if the pocketing underclothes had anything to show for his want of her. Annette couldn’t help but wonder how much of it all Felix could really feel—and the guilt of that flooded back into her with another slow grind of her hips against him, the completely undone, open-mouthed moan he answered her with. But he was so open and wanting beneath her, a complete mess with too sharp of teeth that had bitten her, _ twice, _ and honestly, she wanted to bite him back, just as hard, but she felt like he really didn’t want that. Maybe he needed something softer than that, something kinder.  
  
She placed his hands over her hips, unable to make him cinch his fingers to her waist, but it was close. Then, carefully, she pinned her right thigh between his legs. He grinded breathlessly, shakingly, agonisingly slow against her, as if the energy it had taken to bite her, to beg her with those doe eyes, had robbed him of the ability to move against her. With a laugh, she realized what a total idiot she was for him, definitely outside of her own ability to find pleasure herself, but her drunk idiot boyfriend that she loved, of course, she’d go down on him.  
  
But, when she tried to pull herself lower down his body, she felt Felix’s knees push back a little, and found that his warm, clumsy, far too anxious hands kept pulling back at her dress like he wanted more of her face to his face, rather than touch him any further. She grinded into his needy, insatiable, loose-finger grabs, and found herself kissing his lips; softly, carefully, lingering around his bottom lip, pulling at the skin and meat of it, rolling her tongue over and over, sucking rather obscenely at his mouth as she had planned otherwise lower on his body.  
  
His breathing hitched with every pull, as her tongue had found some new secret spot that he had wanted her to bite. As much as she frustratingly, desperately wanted to, maybe even add a little blood between their kisses, she held herself back; content with the way Felix’s loudness answered her. There wasn’t any coaxing, any bantering between each nip, suck, twist, the way her hands dragged all over his upper shoulders and through his hair. By now Annette would have had to increase her roughness just to hear him— but as it would turn out, unsurprisingly, drunk Felix didn’t care how loud he was being, showing her specifically what he wanted and liked. Soon he was eagerly trying to match her tempo with his own, even if he mainly missed her mouth and licked over her cheek and up her jawline, eventually licking inside of her ear, before she had to correct his mouth back to hers, a little forcefully, a little playfully, a laugh lingering under the movement of her tongue.  
  
She found his steady pace, counting slowly between one and five seconds, before she’d add the muscle of her thigh to slide up and down, pinning Felix between the weight of her body and the slump of the mattress. That, she really loved, because she could feel the sudden gasp ripple through him, his mouth opening into a real, loud, needy moan for her, his thick, hot tongue wet and uselessly winding itself between her mouth and out, the tiny slurred commands to _ d’it again, again. _ _  
_  
Felix murmured against her open mouth, maybe they were words, but she was swallowing down the sounds, humming against the clumsy, unhurried movement of his tongue as it waltzed between their mouths, the closest thing to slow dancing Annette ever imagined she would get with him, tripping over teeth, jumping when she hitched her hands up to hold his head still. He kept moving away with every tug of his lip. The sound of his heavy breathing puncturing the quiet of the room with a quick, traceable flow as Annette listened to Felix’s shivering. His body alternated somewhere between overly hot and overly cold, numb and too sloppy to grind against her the way he wanted.  
  
She increased the skin over him again, listening to the way his breathing dragged, hot and shallow, and before she had a chance to really consider driving him crazy with licking into his neck, consider letting her teeth drag over veins and the unconstrained shuddering of his body, weak and intertwined beneath her, hands in his hair and holding his mouth hot to hers, she felt him desperately cry out, a choked sound, and at once he tried to crumple into a ball, twisting Annette up with him in the process. Even so, it allowed her to feel everything; the messy, unrestrained cry from his orgasm. It was as if his body couldn’t possibly tighten in pleasure against her, as if the unrestrained, languid confusion in his nerves, in his muscles, couldn’t squeeze back, push or pull. He only made a soft, breathless whimper as he pulled away from her, barely able to shift back into her sheets.  
  
“Felix?” She whispered. Last time she had joked that perhaps she might kill him one day.  
  
...And he looked about as destroyed as he had been at the edge of her door in the first place.  
  
His dark hair had covered his face, and Annette smiled softly as she attempted to find his eyes in the mess of it. “Are you there, somewhere?”  
  
From beneath his hair, she felt Felix laugh, quite earnestly. “‘Think so?”  
  
He hiccuped again, and Annette laughed at him, unable to hold it back any longer. Finally, she found his face again, cupping the side of his cheek to move the hair further away so she could see his eyes, staring up at her as if she’d only just found him lying there, used and exhausted and still helplessly drunk. “You okay?”  
  
“‘ette,” he grinned at her, lazy and content. “‘’m drunk, not dyin’.”  
  
“You said you felt like you were earlier,” Annette reminded him teasingly, but she kissed the tip of his nose, even for being a smartass. She then felt herself lower onto his chest, as if she was suddenly nervous at what she had done to him. “Wait. Did want me to stop?” Her nails tightened over his shirt. “I swear, Felix, if you—”  
  
But he laughed again, high, loud, and far too much exactly how Felix sounded when he was alone with her. “I love you!”  
  
“Do you—” Suddenly, Annette stopped. And the world seemed to stop. And, Felix had stopped.  
  
Annette moved her hand to touch his face once more.  
  
And then, she felt them: tears. She felt the wetness of them gently push against the tops of her thumbs.  
  
“Felix?”  
  
“I love you,” Felix said thickly. There was wetness again, all over her, warm and rolling over her skin. The dampness from his mouth on her neck, from his eyes as they closed against her. “I love you, ‘m in love with you, ‘love you, love you.”  
  
She collected either side of his face inside of her hands, brought her lips to his, and tasted the remaining tears that rolled from his cheeks, to his lips, to drip down his chin. “I love you, too, Felix.”  
  
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. ‘bout them.” Annette nodded a little, trying to show him that Felix didn’t have too much control over Dimitri and Sylvain dropping him at her door, nor did she honestly mind it.  
  
“And…” he sniffed, and Annette, that door, that impossible place, opening wider and wider, just for him. “For not talking about—today. About Gl'nh.” He staggered through his brother's name, and Annette could feel the rawness through Felix’s chest; how he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “‘M...not ready.” He looked at her, those large black eyes sightless and vulnerable, blinking sleepily up from under his lashes at her. “But you...um.” He swallowed. “I’m...sorry.”  
  
Annette pushed herself against his chest once more. She allowed his head to rest against her neck. “Felix. I love you, too, okay? And this is enough.” She kissed his cheek again. “That’s enough for me.”  
  
He gave a little breathless laugh again at her. Then, letting go all at once, Felix laid his head back against her shoulder, and Annette swore, she could feel the very second he fell asleep against her. His bottom lip had swollen, pink and still hot against her skin, and the way he unconsciously pushed his face into her, still hunting against her warm skin, his body loose and tangled against her, with his hands still half closed around her waist, gone from her almost as soon as he had arrived.  
  
She lifted her hands to touch at his teeth indents over the soft flesh of her inner arm. Then, she rested her fingertips to feel the tiny, deep grooves into the side of her neck. She wondered if they would be there when she woke up in the morning. She wondered if the redden skin would fade white, or darken into a misty, pale purple, broken skin and small veins, a perfect replica of his teeth etched into her skin. She wondered if she had enough make-up in her kit to hide the marks.  
  
She wondered if maybe she shouldn’t hide it. That, maybe, she didn’t want to. She felt her face heat up so hotly, so brightly, Annette was pretty sure she’d never see her pale reflection in a mirror ever again.  
  
“Um.” She gave a shaky laugh into the darkness. “You’re such a mess.”  
  
She smoothed through his hair, pulling locks apart without much concern from Felix, who sprawled over the majority of Annette's bed. She flushed out the candle and pulled the heavier quilt out from the bottom of her dresser. Then, she threw the quilt over Felix, nervous about him being cold and too numb to know he was that needlessly cold. She curled herself tight beside him, resting his face back onto her pillow, thumbs loosely sliding through his hair.  
  
She found yet another blade of grass, poking just from behind his ear.  
  
“Uh.” She told the darkness. “You had to bring the entire garden into my bed?”  
  
Still, Felix said nothing. His breathing had deepened harshly. She wondered if he would snore, crushed between sheets and her skin, rather wishing to sleep curled around her or die trying.  
  
She found herself smiling. She imagined the looming hangover he’d wake up with would be fair punishment enough. And then some. She frowned. She wished she had gotten him to drink some water before all of this. Her own inability to not be kissing Felix, the one unparalleled force in the way from _ actually _ helping Felix. What a girlfriend she’d turned out to be.  
  
And...she still didn’t really get to the heart of things. They hadn’t talked about why Felix would rather get so drunk he could hardly stand than face that conversation over again.  
  
Well. At least she was here with him. At least he wasn’t alone anymore.  
  
So, today wasn’t the major break through that she had seen happen so steadily with Dimitri. That time wasn’t there for Felix, not yet, but still. Annette couldn’t help but wonder if, even if just for her, she had seen something within Felix that was willing to try. Somewhere between learning to not fear his brother’s death, or burn in the shadow of his father, but try to be someone else beyond them. Felix couldn’t see that person yet. But Annette could.  
  
And that was enough. For them. For now. For however long it took.

* * *

Fanart by @BreadyCakes, please go check out their FABULOUS WORK!!  
  


**Author's Note:**

> AN: Thank you for enjoying, kind fandom. If you feel so inclined, leave me a comment about what you liked, what you feel terrible about (it's definitely the crying sadboi), and some kudos??
> 
> Also feel free to hit me up at my twitter: I'mMostlyNotOhKay (@OhKay58936663 where the '666' in my twitter handle means exactly what you think it does) and feel free to yell about more FE3H ships with me, or at me, or make a request for my next dubious dumpster fire of a fic!


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